Dawn

Of a sort.

It's finally dawning on me. The fact that in two weeks from today, I will have been in Berlin for almost a week. In just more than a week, I will be getting on a plane and leaving my home town, home country, home language, friends, family and everything else that I've known for an entire year. I'll be spending that year in a country that I've only dreamed of going back to, after a short week-long vacation spent there, the best vacation of my life. And for all of the wonderful parts of this realization, it always comes back to the fact that the hug I give my mother before stepping past that line at airport security will be the last hug I give her for a year. That night I spend in bed, on my pillow, will be the last night I spend on my bed for a year. That morning when I wake up and stumble groggily out to the bathroom, will be the last time I feel comfortable in a house for quite a while. The next time I wake up in a house, I'm not going to know where things are, and I'm not going to know the house well enough to be able to walk around turning on the light. I'm going to stumble over things, and wander around on tiptoes trying not to wake people up. My life is going to be turned utterly upside down in just more than a week.

It's scary. A year seems like a much longer amount of time now, when it's going to be starting so soon. Five months ago, a year didn't seem like that long at all, nothing to be scared of, nothing to even make me stop and think. But now, there's a part of me that doesn't want to go. That's wondering what I was thinking, that Ocotober day so long ago. "What are you thining? How can you even think for a second that this is a good idea? You're leaving home. You're leaving the only place you have ever known for a completely new place and a new experience. You don't know anything about what you're doing. You're an idiot." But when that part of me comes out, I realize why I'm doing it. When the scared part refuses to back down, I have to tell myself, "You're not leaving home for a year, you're going to make a new home in a year." And then, hopefully, I can manage to stop tearing up. Maybe. If I'm lucky.

Berlin isn't going anywhere, and neither is Sherman. I am going somewhere. I am leaving Sherman and going to Berlin. A new life is going to be made, whether I like it or not. It's up to me to make it the best possible experience. And I am determined to make it just that.

Oh, and in case of big boo-boos in this post: I just typed it all from a document I had written in my word processor when I was internet-less. I didn't bother to read what I was typing. I apologize for any errors.